Survival Guide - Dust Settles: Messengers

Table of Contents:

Purpose:

Messengers are members of your population assigned to travel to the Neutral Exchange Camp to participate in the trade features available there. Each day the messengers needed to complete the trades you have assigned will travel from your camp with the resources or money being sent to the market and return at night with the items desired. You will need at least one messenger assigned to access the Neutral Exchange Camp options, but once you have a person to spare, these options are extremely useful.

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Assigning Messengers:

Whenever you want to participate in trades and exchanges on the Neutral Exchange Camp's markets, you will have to have at least one messenger assigned. To assign a messenger, click the "Messengers" link at the bottom of the page or the messengers required link in the Neutral Exchange Camp table on the right side. This will open the messenger assignment tools in the middle of your game screen. Here you can enter the number of messengers that you want to assign and click "now" to assign them. You can assign as many messengers as you want as long as you have the available population to spare.

Whether you have messengers assigned or not, you will see one of two small icons on your screen just above the mid-section of your game screen. If you currently have messengers assigned you will see the blue envelope. If you do not have messengers assigned you will see the red envelope. This can especially be useful if your messengers are unassigned due to a sudden staffing shortage.

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Messenger Requirements:

Your basic messenger requirements will be based on the total number of trades that you want to make. In the CEP Exchange, you will be able to make as many exchanges as the number of messengers that you have assigned. You can assign as many AutoExchanges or wagons for pickup from the Trade Market as the number of messengers that you have assigned as well. Since CEP Exchanges are instant, you can use all of theses exchanges possible in a turn and still assign the maximum number of AutoExchanges or wagon pickups. You will not be able to assign the max of both AutoExchange and wagon pickup, though you can assign a combination.

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Limitations:

Messengers, due to their use in Auto Exchange and other trade functions, will be one of the very last groups unstaffed if you run into a population shortage. The turn that your messengers are unstaffed to fill other positions, you will still receive the benefits of the trades that they were supposed to perform that day, thus if you keep an eye on your end turn messages and restaff them whenever you receive an unstaffing message (assuming you can spare the pop), your camp will not miss a beat trade-wise.

Your other primary limitation for messengers is the fact that you can only assign as many people as you have in your available population to act as messengers. Because of the messenger requirements for trade, this can severely limit the number of trades that you can perform, especially through the Trade Market. This is not a very large concern once you have a dozen or so people to spare.

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